backtop
A bi-weekly compilation of the latest outrageous, sometimes humorous,
quotes in the liberal media.

January 11, 1999

(Vol. Twelve; No. 1)

A Legislative Coup d'Etat?

"That was the party with the slender
majority and two weeks to live that impeached the man because they could. It
was a spiteful action, an action that they performed absolutely in violation
of the framers' intent. It was a legislative coup d'etat, and it has been
rejected utterly by the American people, 73 percent of whom now say they
approve of the President's performance in office..."-- Geraldo Rivera, with "NBC News" under his name as his
identifier, December 22 Today.

"Ladies and gentlemen what I said
yesterday, what I say today is the most important thing I have ever said to
you. If those leaders do not allow your elected representatives the option of
voting on censure or impeachment then they have robbed, they have robbed from
you, make no mistake about it. They have used a procedural device to steal
from you your right to be democratically represented on the floor of the House
of Representatives! They have stolen that from you!"-- Geraldo Rivera, December 9 Rivera Live on CNBC.

Republicans Self-Destruct?

"Frankly, if the Republicans want to go
ahead and do this, I think they disgrace themselves in a more profound way
than President Clinton has by abusing the machinery of impeachment, knowing
full well that the Senate will hold a sham trial and they will be, in effect,
delivered of this ridiculous conclusion they've come to."-- Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on The McLaughlin Group,
December 12.

"I think that the Republicans are going to pay a price for this hard line
attitude because Henry Hyde himself said they would never do this along
partisan lines, the House would be disgraced if they did it along partisan
lines, and that's exactly what they're doing."-- U.S. News contributing editor Steve Roberts on CNN's Late
Edition, December 13.

"Don, help me here. After the Republican sweep led by the now resigned
Newt Gingrich in 1994, when the Republicans had their peak victory in recent
history, President Clinton said that after that, after 1994, that if you left
them, the Republicans, alone that they would burn themselves out. Now is or is
not what we have now a race sort of between when the Republicans burn
themselves out or burn the President up?"-- Dan Rather to former Clinton speechwriter Donald Baer during live CBS
News impeachment coverage, December 19.

Traitorous Republicans

"As salvo after salvo of cruise missiles
continue to punish Iraq, Republicans in Congress are engaging in conduct that
during the war in Vietnam they called giving aid and comfort to the
enemy...Although they have backed off from the most inflammatory language of
yesterday they are still pressing for impeachment."-- Geraldo Rivera opening the December 17 Upfront Tonight.

Hitting Clinton....from the Left

"But when you propose a hundred billion
dollars in additional spending for the Pentagon, even though the Cold War is
over with, that is money that could go for education, could go for health
care, could go for improving the cities, agriculture, environment. That's
money that's now going to go for defense spending. So where is the money
going to come from?"-- CNN's Wolf Blitzer to OMB Director Jack Lew, January 3 Late Edition.

We Wanted to Honor Hillary As Our Spurned
Spouse of the Year

"It's that person or persons who's
affected the news the most, affected our history the most for good or for ill.
Had it been an award, had it been somebody we wanted to honor, you know there
are a lot of other people from Mark McGwire to Hillary Clinton..."-- Time Managing Editor Walter Isaacson explaining his Men of the
Year choice, December 20 Meet the Press.

"For a while...she was our leading contender. Her strength and her almost
surreal ability to assert her dignity were remarkable to some and mystifying
to others. She also, for many months, helped determine how the nation framed
the scandal debate by portraying it as a partisan battle and disgusting
prosecutorial invasion of personal privacy. So why didn't we choose her?
Sentimentally, a lot of us wanted to; I personally was fascinated and
impressed by her."-- Isaacson's "To Our Readers" article, Dec. 28/Jan. 4 Time.

Freudian Slip About Republicans As
Extremists?

"Rumpled, charmed, low-key, conciliatory,
someone who can get along with both moderates and Republicans, a veteran, a
nuts and bolts legislator..."-- ABC's Linda Douglass describing incoming House Speaker Dennis Hastert,
December 19 World News Tonight.

Ken Starr: Just Larry Flynt With Subpoena Power

"Adultery as a killer issue will haunt
politics for years to come. Now we have Larry Flynt following on the heels of
the tabloids, the press and Ken Starr. What's kept Clinton in office is
partly the fear of Starr, who's Flynt with subpoena power and a grand jury.
People don't want their government going into a person's sex life, no
matter how reprehensible. Sticking with marriage is the right thing to do but
not because Larry Flynt or the government is waiting to humiliate you if you
don't."-- Time reporter Margaret Carlson's "Outrage of the
Year," as announced on CNN's Capital Gang on December 26.

"Reverend Falwell, is Mr. Flynt, in effect, doing the work of the
Christian Right, here?"-- Good Morning America substitute co-host Cynthia McFadden to Jerry
Falwell, December 22.

Stop a Senate Trial

"Didn't I say to you that we are
marching off the cliff? Reason tells you we should stop this and get on with
the business of governance. But, there is precious little. I mean, I spent
most of today and yesterday half on the phone while I was covering this thing,
with Senators Republican and Democratic, and at the moment everybody's
fondest hope is that the two week hiatus, between now and the new year, in
that period impeachment will sink in and sanity will prevail and we'll avoid
a trial. But there are a lot of people that don't want that to happen."-- National Public Radio's Nina Totenberg, December 19 Inside
Washington.

Co-host Jodi Applegate: "Senator Hutchison, the poll
numbers reveal the American people don't want the President removed. His
approval ratings are up to 72 percent, Republicans' ratings are down. What
kind of leverage do Republicans really have given the conventional wisdom,
which admittedly has been wrong before, that no way are Republicans ever going
to get the 67 votes, what kind of leverage do Republicans have against the
President given all that?"Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX): "The
Constitution."-- December 20 Today.

"Why are you convinced of that [a speedy trial in the Senate] because
many people have been talking about a long, protracted trial taking attention
away from the important issues in this country that people really care
about?"-- NBC's Today co-host Katie Couric to Senator Mitch McConnell,
December 21.

Lauer: Have You No Decency?

"Speaker Wright, let me start with you.
When you resigned nine years ago, you had been battered by the right. You
called for an end to what you called 'mindless cannibalism.' Nine years
later we're hearing terms like that again and others swirling around the
impeachment of Bill Clinton. Have we learned nothing in nine years?"-- Matt Lauer to former Speaker Jim Wright, who resigned over ethical
problems, December 21 Today.

"Speaker Wright, during McCarthy's sort of communist witch hunt, the
really turning point was when one person being grilled by the Senator said
'do you have no decency.' Do you see anybody with the credibility in
Washington right now to ask that same question?"-- Lauer to Wright, same show.

Media Should Raise McCarthyism

"This has been called the era when nothing
truly matters. Nothing breaks through. It all ends up sounding the same. And
when a certain Congressman from Florida said during the debate Saturday,
'have you no sense of decency, sir?', using the same quote as what ended,
in a lot of people's minds the McCarthy era, it didn't get through because
it wasn't heard because it was at the same volume as everything else."-- MSNBC's Brian Williams, referring to Democrat Robert Wexler, to House
Democratic investigative counsel Abbe Lowell, December 21 News with Brian
Williams.

Republicans Hate Clinton Because ....He Can Do
Two Things at Once

Thomas Friedman, New York Times
columnist: "One of the things that on listening to this debate
that just strikes me, the law and everything else aside, there's something
about Clinton that makes the Republicans crazy. What is it?"

Michael Duffy, Time magazine's
Washington Bureau Chief: "Yeah, it's true. Part of it I think
we saw this week is his ability to do two things at once. I think it really
does drive them up a tree. He has this extraordinary compartmentalized
ability. This week we saw him on Wednesday go from meetings about impeachment
on the Hill to meetings about Iraq to phone calls to Senators about what will
happen there if it goes on to the Senate, back to writing his statement about
you know. The extraordinary thing about Clinton is he's able to
compartmentalize these stories in ways that lot of Americans are not,
certainly I'm not. And it's hard for, I think, people to understand how he
does his job, how he can do this with all this that's swirling around
him."-- December 18 Washington Week in Review on PBS.